Blogoshpere Gone Wild: Top Blogs Play Telephone with Nissan

November 18, 2007 | By Darius Monsef | Articles, Entreprenews

I saw an interesting article pop up last week about Nissan developing color changing paint… Sounded like something perfect to blog about on my color + design blog, so to confirm the story, I sent an email into Nissan Motors and they were nice enough to call me back. Turns out Nissan has no idea where this current web urban legend originated from and they confirmed that they aren’t developing color changing paint.

As I tried to search for where the story originated, I stumbled into the blogging equivalent of a childhood game of telephone. How exactly did this rumor spread in 3 days from a small energy news site to some of the highest trafficked auto & technology blogs on the web? Could Wired, GizModo, Engadget, Jalopnik, etc. really have been part of such a badly spun web of news?

Follow us post by post in the latest game of Blogophone…

Around November 6th, NextEnergyNews.com put up a story about the color changing paint technology being developed. They explained the basics of how this technology works, but they set this all off when they mention Nissan in passing::

Scientists Develop Auto Paint That Changes Color With the Press of a Button

The process starts out with a standard galvanized piece of automotive sheet metal steel. A special polymer is applied to the steel with superparamagnetic iron oxide particles embedded within it. The nanoscale crystalline particles of magnetite (iron oxide) are controlled using a low grade magnetic field which is used to effect the spacing of the colloidal crystals and thereby controlling their ability to reflect light and change color.

The coatings are perfect for an automotive application because a continuous small magnetic charge is needed to keep the desired color active and the driver also has the ability to turn off the system at which time the vehicle turns back to its default color of white.
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This revolutionary new paramagnetic paint is a technical wonder and is viewed by Nissan and other auto companies as an amazing innovation…

What seems to be the first blog to pick this up, luxvelocity doesn’t add much to the story, but a little suggestion of a sexy Nissan spotscar to imagine this feature on…

Paramagnetic Paint: Change the Color of Your Vehicle at the Touch of a Button

Fancy the White color on your soon to be ordered Nissan GTR?

This is Where the Blognannegans Really Begin…

Motor Authority picked up the story, and definitely got inspired by luxvelocity… they added fancy image of a red, black and white Nissan GTR and connected the recently released Self-Healing paint by Nissan to this new technology.